"Breaking Creed" by Alex Kava, my final thoughts

I have finished Breaking Creed by Alex Kava. It is her first book of a new series that I won on goodreads.com. The book won't be released until late January but I won an advanced readers copy of the book that was not the finished product, but it was pretty close. And I must say, this book was very good. I haven't read Kava's writing before, but I might check out her other novels. She has a long series that have Agent Maggie O'Dell in them, and agent O'Dell makes an appearance in this book as well, even though the book is base more around Ryder Creed.

So I'll go into more about this book now. First I would like to say, the name Ryder Creed is like the most perfect name ever for this character. I always have a hard time with coming up with names when I'm writing, but this name was perfect. It's got a little edge to it, rolls of the tongue, but is short and simple at the same time. I can't really explain it, but this name fit perfectly with the character. Creed is an ex-marine who was stationed in Afghanistan, but now runs a dog training company with his partner, Hannah. They train dogs to sniff out drugs, people, evidence, anything. And he has several dogs that he trains to do other things as well. It's quit remarkable what he has trained his dogs to do. But his favorite dog, Grace, finds something that will change his life. They are sniffing for drugs in an airport when Grace finds a young teen, Amanda, smuggling drugs in her body after swallowing them. Amanda asks for his help and he does. Spinning everything out of control because of this one girl that ends up creating a connection to a case that O'Dell is working. I don't want to go into too much more because I don't want to spoil too much, but I hope this gives a good idea of what the book is about.

One thing that people may not like is that there are several POV shifts. Nearly each chapter is a different POV, mainly between O'Dell and Creed, but there are others as well. Usually I like this style, but in this book I think it slowed things down slightly in the beginning. But then things pick up and you don't notice it as often. That would be the only thing, and I know some people don't like multiple POV's like that. So that's just a heads up.

I hope to get the second book, which I believe is set to be released this coming summer. I have a feeling it's going to be a great series and I hope you pick up this book. It was a fun, fast read. I really enjoyed it. I'm going to be rating this book a 5/5 on goodreads.com and I would like to thank the author for the giveaway and giving me a chance to read this advanced readers copy of the book. I really enjoyed it.

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The next book I will be reading is the second book of The Dawn of Dragon's series I started a while back. I got the 2nd and 3rd book for Christmas!! I will be starting Requiem's Hope by Daniel Arenson. Happy reading everyone :)

!! So I'll be starting

Still reading

Don't worry. I'm still reading. Today I got a good chunk read in Breaking Creed and I must say things are starting to get interesting now. I feel there is almost too much set up to this book, there is a lot of back and forth between POV's, which are interesting, but I think it took up too much time setting up the characters and their personalities. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the book and just now things are starting to heat up and get interesting with the case and the girl who was being used as a drug mule. But so far I would recommend this book. I have an early copy that is unedited, but it's really good. Even with the long beginning, it held my interest and I can't wait for the end. It's a pretty fast read and I imagine I could potentially have it done by Wednesday, but if not, Thursday for sure. The chapters are short so it goes really quick.

Hope you all had a great holiday. Happy reading everyone :)

Started "Breaking Creed"

I started reading Breaking Creed and I'm enjoying it so far. I only read about 40 pages so far, so things are still developing. But it's interesting. I haven't read anything by this author before, but it looks like she has a lot of books. Maybe some day I'll check them out. But so far I'm enjoying this book. I will probably do some reading tomorrow. But I'll be gone most of the weekend celebrating christmas out of town. So there probably won't be any updates from me for a while. Merry Christmas and happy reading everyone :)

"In the Woods" by Tana French, my final thoughts

I finally finished it! And it was amazing! I am rating this book 5/5 on goodreads.com because I absolutely loved the plot and the characters and the POV, just everything about this book. This was a great novel and I can't wait to read more of her books eventually. But I'll start by giving a small overview and then more details about the things I liked.

I really enjoyed this book. It starts out with a flashback kind of thing about the main character, Ryan, and what happened to him and his friends when he was young, and this event kind of plays through the rest of the story. Ryan is in his late 20's who is a murder detective and one day he and his partner, Cassie, investigate a murder of a 12 year old girl that happened in the same neighborhood that the event of Ryan's childhood took place. Very eery and creepy, but I enjoyed it. It was interesting. I won't give too much more about the plot because I don't want to give anything away, but I will admit it was difficult for me to put this book down.

The characters were great. Very unique and believable, even the characters that weren't as prevalent were unique and felt real even though they were only there for a brief few moments. But the two main characters, Cassie and Ryan were great, and the story is told through Ryan's perspective. But what really got me, was that every now and then, Ryan starts addressing the reader. He goes into the 2nd person and says 'you' to the reader. It threw me off a little at first, but it was done wonderfully. Not many authors do this, but I felt that French did a wonderful job with incorporating the 2nd person. It was subtle but interesting at the same time, bringing the reader closer to the story than they already were. I think this is why I enjoyed this book so much. Otherwise I might have given it a 4.5, but this extra POV gave it the last jump to a full 5/5.

I would recommend this book to anyone who really enjoys detective stories, or thrillers, or psychological thrillers. It was great and keeps you on your toes. Or at least it did for me :)

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The next book that I will be reading is Breaking Creed by Alex Kava. I won this novel in a goodreads.com giveaway.

Still reading

Hey everyone. Sorry I haven't given an update recently. Yesterday my brother visited so I didn't have much time to read, but I got a good chunk read today. I'm about 75% of the way through In the Woods and things are starting to get really good. Rob (Adam) is starting to piece things together about his past, but it's still foggy, but I'm sure it'll come through in the end. And things between him and his partner are getting complicated and he can't seem to get a handle on anything, making things even more difficult. I'm really excited to finish this book. I'm guessing that I will have it done around Monday, depending if I have time to read some this weekend. Otherwise expect a full review on Tuesday. It shouldn't take me longer than Tuesday to finish it. It's a fairly easy read and now that things are picking up I feel that I'm reading it faster to find out what happens. Happy reading everyone :)

Continueing "In the Woods"

I'm nearly half way through In the Woods and things are really starting to get interesting. Cass and Adam keep hitting dead ends with the murder case but they still think it might be related to Adam's missing childhood friends. Things are beginning to slowly seep back from his memory, even though he can't make sense of it yet. I have a feeling things are going to really start coming together soon and it's going to be great. I really want to know the connection and know what had happened to Adam and his friends that night when they were twelve.

I am really enjoying this author's writing style. She has very good images and she does a great job of getting in Adam's head, it helps that it's in his perspective, but he also addresses the reader with 'you' every now and then. I find it fascinating that when authors do this; it really brings the reader into the story I think. I creates a closer link between reader and story, making them almost a part of it. Not many authors do thing, however, but when they do chose to incorporate the second person, it's wonderfully done and really makes things interesting. I'm only half way through this book and I would recommend it to anyone!
Happy reading everyone :)

Started "In the Woods"

I started In the Woods and I am really enjoying it so far. I've read the first 7 chapters and quite a bit has happened. A good amount of it is background and getting to know the characters, but it's well written and not sluggish or boring at all.

The story takes place in Ireland, and it is about this man, Rob, who is a murder detective. He is nearly 30 and he and his partner take a case that hits close to home for Rob. Rob experienced something traumatic when he was about 12, if I remember correctly, but he can't remember a single thing that happened in those woods behind his house. He was with two of his friends who were never found. And things are starting to look like the current case he's working on might be related to what happened to him and his still missing childhood friends.

I'm really excited to see where this book goes and how/if it is connection, which I'm sure it is. And I can't wait to see what had actually happened. My curiosity is going crazy! Happy reading everyone :)

"Requiem's Song (Dawn of Dragons #1)" By Daniel Arenson

So I have finished Requiem's Song and I absolutely loved this book. I won a free ebook of this book and I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was pulled into it right away and I had a difficult time putting this book down. But after some looking into the series, it seems that there are three other trilogies before this one, but I had no troubles reading this book by itself, and I hope to get all of the books in this series because I loved this book.

I will warn you, this book is kind of graphic. There is a lot of abuse and the time period is slightly unclear, but it appears to be almost like a barbaric time period. Perhaps the time period is more clear in the earlier books but you get a good sense of it being a long time ago by the living conditions. But there is a lot of abuse and some readers may not like that, and if you don't, I would NOT recommend this book to you. But if it doesn't bother you too much I would then recommend this book if you like books about dragons. I will admit I haven't really read many books with dragons in them, but I loved this one and I hope to get the rest of the books sometime soon.

So I'll try and give a small summary. Oh, and the story is told is several POVs (point of views). I actually really liked this for this book, but some people may not like this many POVs in one novel. But the author labeled each chapter with who's POV it is in, making it easier. But that is something else a reader may want to know before making a decision.

Ok, back to the summary. It takes place in a world where people can shift into dragons. But not everyone can do this. And many of the people are convinced that this is a disease and the dragons should be killed to "cleanse" the world of their disease. But a royal family is nothing but dragons, making things a little difficult. And another man and his family is trying to create a sanctuary for dragons to live in peace and not in fear of being caught as a dragon. And then there is lots of fighting, and demons and nasty, ugly creatures from the underworld show up to help the king fight these dragons. I could have lived without some of these creatures, but I will give the author credit for his creativeness with these creatures, no matter how disgusting they are.

Like I said earlier, I really enjoyed this book. It was hard for me to stop reading it, which is why I got through it pretty quick. It's an easy read, with lots of detail, and the characters were well written as well. I would recommend this book to people who relaly enjoy books about dragons and don't mind abuse, because there is quite a bit of it. I am going to be rating this book a 5/5 on goodreads.com

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Since I do not have the next book of this series, I am going to be starting a new novel that I recently got. I am going to be reading In the Woods by Tana Fench. I've been wanting to read this for a while and finally bought it. I can't wait. Happy reading everyone! :)

Hello

Hello everyone. I hoe you had a good weekend. I just wanted to inform you that I am going to be taking a break from the short story collection. I'm about half way through it, but I have a few novels that I really want to get to and I want to focus on them. If I find extra time I may continue a story or two from Munro's collection. But I think for now I am going to focus on a few novels that I recently inquired, and I'm sure I'll be getting more since Christmas is coming up and my birthday is a few weeks after Christmas as well. So I should be getting plenty. But the book that I have recently started is called Requiem's Song (Dawn of Dragons, #1) by Daniel Arenson. I won a free ebook of this novel and I am really enjoying it so far. Happy reading everyone :)

"Working for a Living"

The next story in Alice Munro's short story collection is Working for a Living. I don't have a whole lot to say about this story because it was not my favorite. It did not stand out much to me and it was somewhat uneventful. So my review of this story will probably be pretty short today.

This story takes place in about the early 1910's to 1920's and it is about this girl's father and how hardship working. Well, it wasn't exactly terrible, they were just getting by and were able to get some extra money if they really needed it. But the story is essentially about this girl's father's work experience during his life. He grew up on a farm and helped his parents farm, but when he was in his mid 20's he decided to go into the fur business and started raising his own fox and such. But he joined a little to late, about when the demand for furs was going downhill. But he managed to keep it going a little longer with the help of his wife. And down the line he ended up working nights as a caretaker in a factory and doing security, and he also mended the farm that they were owning as well. And much later into his life he raised Turkeys and eventually wrote a novel in his old age.

But that was really about it. I guess it is a look at what families did to survive, and that this man wanted to do something unusual, and he did, and he did fairly well at if for a while. But I did not find this story very enjoyable, but some might like it. But for me, it is one that probably could have been left out of the collection. Don't get me wrong, Munro's writing style is still amazing and the detail and characters were fantastically written, but the plot itself was kind of boring to me, making it difficult to enjoy.

Happy reading everyone :)

"The View From Castle Rock"

The View from Castle Rock was an amazing storing in Alice Munro's collection of short stories "Family Furnishings." I really enjoyed this story as well. It was much different from the other stories so far in this collection, helping vary up the long collection of stories. There was a lot going on in this story, so I'll keep my overview of it somewhat short because otherwise I think it could get confusing.

This story is about a family who is making the voyage over to America from Europe. First it starts with the father speaking of his dream for him and his family to go there to start fresh and maybe make more money than they do at present. And the father takes one of his sons up to a tower to view what he thinks to be America from across the sea, when really it is only an island that is not too far away. But the image stays with his son until the make the journey, which is several years later when his father is an old man and his son has a child with another on the way.

The journey is long and boring at times, but the father does not hold back his story telling. Some people can't stand it, but others find it as something to do. But what I really liked about this story is that it was so different from the other stories in this collection. And she really gets in the heads of all the characters and their personalities as they are traveling to the new world and the difficulties that come with it.And her detail description is amazing as well, like it has been the entire collection so far. She must have done a lot of research for this story because everything she describes, and the language the people use, and their mannerisms seem so real and accurate for the time period. I'm not a huge reader of historical fiction but I did really enjoy this piece.

Happy reading everyone :)

"The Bear Came Over the Mountain"

This story, The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro was so sad. I think it is the saddest story of her collection so far. This is the 8th story of her collection Family Furnishings. This story was a little longer, similar to the first couple of stories.

This story is about an old married couple, Fiona and Grant. I'm not exactly sure how old they are, but I'm guessing around late 60's to early 70's because they don't seem to be much older than that, but I can't remember if there was a specific age mentioned or not. But anyways...I think Fiona is a few years younger than Grant, but she begins to show symptoms of aging before he does. She begins to lose her short term memory and after a while begins to lose some of her long term memory. At first Grant thinks that she is making some of it up as a kind of game, because she is known to do that with him. But after awhile he doesn't think it's a game, and when she wanders out in the middle of a busy street, he decides it's time to put her in a nursing home where they can watch her.

He cannot see her for the first 30 days while she is there so that she can get a chance to adjust without any influence to get her out of the facility. After 30 days he goes to see her. She appears to recognize him, but she also seems to have grown close with another man who is in the facility. The rest of the story is about him trying to figure out how to deal with this situation because he does not want to upset her, but he does not want to loose his wife entirely either.

This story was so touching and sad at the same time. This man stayed true to his wife, even though she could barely remember him and their life together sometimes, and she seemed fond for another man. And the ending of the story was sweet as well. I think this story is my favorite now of this collection so far. I am no where near that age, I'm in my early 20's, but this story struck my heart because my grandmother is in a similar situation with my grandfather. He has been in a nursing home for several years now and can barely speak, but she visits him nearly everyday and has stood strong with him every step of the way, and I think that is why this story really touched me. This was a marvelous story and I highly recommend it. Happy reading everyone :)

"Post and Beam"

The next story in Alice Munro's collection is called Post and Beam, the 7th story in the collection. I enjoyed this story better than the previous story. This was had an interesting take on the ending. But first I'll try and give a general summery of the story. This story was a little shorter as well. I think the next few will be about the same length from what I saw flipping through to see their length.


First we meet this young man named Lionel, who is supposed to be a genius, at least that is what I understood. He went to college at a young age, but he ended up having a mental breakdown and was sent to a mental institution. But somehow he becomes friends with Lorna and her family. The rest of the story follows Lorna and her cousin Polly who comes to visit. Her husband is under the impression that Polly is going to ask for money but Lorna doesn't believe it. But later in the story she gets the idea that Polly is planning on staying, and not returning her her grandmother and aunt whom she has been living with her whole life. And Polly gets the idea that Lorna's family does not want her around anymore.

And after all of this, Lorna and her family go off to a wedding they had been invited to for the weekend, and on the way back, Lorna gets worried that Polly might have done something terrible to herself because of the way things were when they left. I won't go much further because I don't want to spoil the ending, but it wasn't exactly what I had expected.

One thing that I have noticed in this collection so far is that Munro seems to write from the female perspective most of the time. At least she has so far with the first 7 stories. It could vary as I continue through the collection, but the last few have been female dominate in point of view. I'm not saying its a bad thing, it's just an observation that I noticed today. But once again, this story is full of detail, but it isn't overwhelmingly detailed. It's just enough and worded so well that you can picture everything you need to to get inside these characters' minds and pasts. I absolutely love her writing style.

Continuing "Family Furnishings"

Yay! I finally had time to read a story in Alice Munro's collection! Today I read the short story Family Furnishings, the same title she used to name the collection of stories. This is 6th story of the collection, and it is shorter than the first 5, which was a nice change.

So I'm going to sum up this story a little bit for you. This story is about a girls aunt, Alfrida, which I thought was an interesting name. Alfrida is kind of one of those aunts who just doesn't care what others think of her, she will do what she likes, while still being polite and friendly. But she had a traumatic childhood when her mother died form a horrible accident. So Alfrida ended up living with this girls grandmother. And we don't learn this girls name until late in the story, her name is Tennessee Williams, again, and interesting name. But this story mainly is about the affect Alfrida has on Tennessee and what kind of woman she becomes herself, even when she starts to see Alfrida less often. And when Tennessee is in her second year of college she finally goes to have lunch at Alfrida's house and learns more about her mother's death. Tennessee then decides that she wants to use some of that in a story that she eventually writes years later. And at the end of this story we learn more about Alfrida than expected, but I won't spoil it for you :)

I did enjoy this story, but it wasn't as great as the a few of the earlier stories. At least for me. I think I wanted a little more influence of Alfrida on Tennessee's life, but then again, we all have that aunt who we love greatly and has a unique personality compared to the rest of the family, but only visits occasionally, no matter how close they live. But like I said, it wasn't as great as a few of the other stories to far. But I think Alfrida was the most unique character yet and the more lively and detailed in her characteristics while being told from an outsiders perspective. I really like how Munro can write so differently with POV and characters and their mannerisms. It's amazing. I can see why she won the nobel prize in literature. She has an amazing talent and I can't wait to continue this collection. Happy reading everyone :)